NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE ADRIANUS JOHANNES AND 

MARIA REIJERS

______________________ 

2014-1052

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 11/718,322.

______________________ 

Decided: June 5, 2014

______________________ 

TIMOTHY J. ZARLEY, Zarley Law Firm, P.L.C., of Des 

Moines, Iowa, for appellant. 

NATHAN K. KELLEY, Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property Law and Solicitor, for appellee. With 

him on the brief were MARY L. KELLY and MICHAEL S.

FORMAN, Associate Solicitors.

______________________ 

Before PROST,

∗ Chief Judge, TARANTO and CHEN, Circuit 

Judges.

∗ Sharon Prost assumed the position of Chief Judge 

on May 31, 2014.

 
2 IN RE REIJERS

PER CURIAM. 

Adrianus Johannes Maria Reijers appeals the decision 

of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Board 

of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“Board”) affirming

the rejection of four claims of Reijers’s patent application. 

Reijers challenges the Board’s finding that independent 

Claim 11 is anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) by U.S. 

Patent No. 2,211,490 (“Braun”).1 Because substantial 

evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that Braun 

anticipates Claim 11, we affirm.

I 

Reijers’s application claims a method of removing liquid from the surface of a “food strand.” The strand is 

moved through a series of “gas flows” or “gas knives” that 

blow liquid from the strand. Independent Claim 11 

states: 

11. Method for removing liquid from the surface of a 

food product, characterised [sic] in that 

the food product is supplied as a food strand, which 

food strand is successively carried through a plurality of gas flows 

wherein a supply means for gas is placed adjacently 

of a transport route of the food product and 

1 The Board also affirmed the Examiner’s rejection 

of dependent Claims 12, 13, and 14. Reijers does not 

argue that the three dependent claims are patentable if 

Claim 11 is not. Accordingly, we do not separately address dependent Claims 12, 13, and 14. Those claims fall 

with Claim 11. See In re Nielson, 816 F.2d 1567, 1572 

(Fed. Cir. 1987). 

 
IN RE REIJERS 3

the supply means for gas are adapted to generate 

the plurality of gas flows crossing the transport 

route successively in the direction of transport 

wherein the separate gas flows originate from 

placed-apart slots to blow liquid from the food 

product in a number of phases by a number of successive and mutually separated gas knives. 

J.A. 32.

The Examiner rejected Claim 11 as anticipated by 

Braun. Similar to Claim 11 in Reijers’s application, the 

Braun patent claims a method for drying food products. 

Claim 5 reads:

5. A method of drying tubular structures which 

comprises inflating a tubular structure with a gas, 

then passing said tubular structure over a conduit 

and ejecting a hot gas from openings in said conduit directed towards said tubular structure in 

order to suspend said tubular structure in said hot 

gas and thereby dry the same. 

Braun, col. 5:33–6:2. As an example of a “tubular structure,” Braun describes “artificial sausage skins, from 

solutions or fibrous masses of vegetable or animal origin.” 

Id. col. 1:2–4. Braun further discloses that the claimed 

conduit “openings” may take the form of “parallel continuous rows of openings separated by a small interval . . . .” 

Id. col. 3:24–26. The pressure of the gas ejected through 

the openings may be varied depending on the type of 

tubular product to be dried. See id. col. 2:38–46 (contrasting the relatively low minimum pressures needed to 

dry most tubular products with the higher pressures 

needed to dry the “special case[]” of “coronary sausage”). 

In rejecting Claim 11 as anticipated, the Examiner 

concluded that Braun discloses “a plurality of gas flows”—

ejected from “placed-apart slots”—that separately flow 

“over the sausage food product to dry the sausage.” 
4 IN RE REIJERS

J.A. 57. Reijers appealed the rejection to the Board, 

arguing that “Braun does not teach that the openings 

blow liquid from the product or that the openings represent successive, mutually separate gas knives that blow 

liquid from the product in phases.” J.A. 3. In affirming 

the Examiner’s rejection, the Board found that Braun 

necessarily would anticipate the claim elements that 

Reijers argued were not expressly disclosed. 

Braun’s openings are in the form of placed-apart 

slots. These placed-apart slots/openings of Braun, 

like those recited in claim 11, necessarily would 

create successive and mutually separated gas 

knives, and Appellant provides the appeal record 

with no explanation to the contrary. Likewise, the 

separate gas flows originating from Braun’s 

slots/openings necessarily would blow liquid from 

food product in the course of achieving the drying 

objective desired by Braun. Again, Appellant does 

not offer a contrary explanation in the record of 

this appeal. 

J.A. 3–4 (internal citations omitted). 

Reijers timely appealed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).

II

Anticipation is a question of fact, as is the subsidiary 

question of whether a prior art reference discloses—either 

expressly or inherently—a claim limitation. In re 

Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473, 1477 (Fed. Cir. 1997). We 

uphold decisions of the Board on factual matters if there 

is substantial evidence in the record to support the 

Board’s findings. In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. 

Cir. 2000). A finding is supported by substantial evidence 

if a reasonable mind might accept that evidence as adequate to support a conclusion. Consol. Edison Co. of New 

York v. N.L.R.B., 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938). 
IN RE REIJERS 5

Reijers’s principal argument on appeal is that Braun 

does not disclose a method for blowing liquid from a food 

product, as required by Claim 11. Reijers argues that 

“there is no express disclosure in Braun that there is 

liquid on the surface of the sausage casing.” Appellant’s 

Br. 12. Moreover, Reijers contends that Braun “teaches a 

gentle drying process,” not a blowing drying process. 

Quoting language from Braun’s specification, Reijers 

notes that Braun’s gas flows merely “play over” the conveyed casing. 

We note that the Board did not find, and the Director 

need not show, that Braun expressly discloses the blowing 

of liquid from the surface of a sausage casing. The Board 

found that “gas flows originating from Braun’s 

slots/openings necessarily would blow liquid from food 

product in the course of achieving the drying objective 

desired by Braun.” J.A. 3–4 (emphasis added). We have 

long held that such inherent disclosure may serve as a 

basis for a finding of anticipation. “It is well settled that 

a prior art reference may anticipate when the claim 

limitations not expressly found in that reference are 

nonetheless inherent in it. Under the principles of inherency, if the prior art necessarily functions in accordance 

with, or includes, the claimed limitations, it anticipates.” 

In re Cruciferous Sprout Litig., 301 F.3d 1343, 1349 (Fed.

Cir. 2002) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, an inherent disclosure may anticipate a 

method claim. See id.; see also Perricone v. Medicis 

Pharm. Corp., 432 F.3d 1368, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2005) 

(“[W]hen considering a prior art method, the anticipation 

doctrine examines the natural and inherent results in 

that method without regard to the full recognition of those 

benefits or characteristics within the art field at the time 

of the prior art disclosure.”).

Based on the disclosures in Braun, we find that sufficient evidence exists for a reasonable mind to conclude 

that Braun would necessarily blow liquid off a food prod-
6 IN RE REIJERS

uct as part of its drying process. The Board could reasonably conclude that Braun’s sausage casings—which, after 

all, need to be dried—necessarily include the presence of 

at least some liquid on their surface. And even if Braun 

did not contemplate using its claimed method specifically 

for blowing surface liquid off a sausage casing, its disclosure of ejected gas delivered at varying pressures, see

Braun, col. 2:38–46, supports the Board’s conclusion that 

performing the method would result in blowing liquid off 

the casing. See Perricone, 432 F.3d at 1378. 

We find unpersuasive Reijers’s arguments to the contrary. Reijers contends that Braun teaches that the 

ejected gas flows “countercurrent” to the casing. Appellant’s Br. 12 (citing Braun, col. 1:45–55). Reijers suggests 

that a countercurrent gas flow—that is, a flow that moves 

in the opposite direction as the conveyed casing—would 

be incapable of blowing liquid off a food product. There 

are two problems with this argument. First, as the Director points out, Braun elsewhere describes its gas stream 

as flowing “perpendicular” to the tubular food product. 

Braun, col. 4:22–32; see also id. at Fig. 6. The angle of the 

ejected gas in Braun appears similar to the angle of the 

ejected gas described in Reijers’s application. Compare

Braun at Fig. 6, with J.A. 130 at Fig. 2. Second, even if 

Reijers is correct that the gas flow disclosed in Braun 

runs countercurrent to the casing, Reijers does not explain why such a flow would fail to blow liquid off the 

casing’s surface. Reijers points to language in Braun 

suggesting that the flow of gas ensures that the casing is 

not blown away. The fact, however, that the gas flow does 

not blow away the casing itself does not therefore mean 

that the flow would not blow away liquid from the surface 

of the casing. 

Reijers also argues that Braun does not teach the use 

of a food strand; instead, Reijers maintains, Braun discloses only the drying of an artificial sausage skin. This 

argument, which would require us to construe the claim 
IN RE REIJERS 7

term “food strand,” was not raised before the Board and 

we therefore decline to consider it for the first time on 

appeal. We note that the Examiner was not obligated to 

construe every claim term when examining Reijers’s 

patent application. See In re Jung, 637 F.3d 1356, 1365 

(Fed. Cir. 2011) (“There has never been a requirement for 

an examiner to make an on-the-record claim construction 

of every term in every rejected claim and to explain every 

possible difference between the prior art and the claimed 

invention in order to make out a prima facie rejection.”).

For the reasons stated above, the Board’s decision is

affirmed. 

AFFIRMED

COSTS

No costs.